Exploration and engineering
Subtitle: the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the quest for Mars
By: Erik M. Conway
Series: New series in NASA history; New series in NASA history
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 405
ISBN-13: 9781421416045; 9781421421223
Subjects: Jet Propulsion Laboratory (U.S.); Exploration; Space flight to Mars
Description: Although the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has become synonymous with the United States' planetary exploration during the past half century, its most recent focus has been on Mars. Beginning in the 1990s and continuing through the Mars Phoenix mission of 2007, JPL led the way in engineering an impressive, rapidly evolving succession of Mars orbiters and landers, including roving robotic vehicles whose successful deployment onto the Martian surface posed some of the most complicated technical problems in space flight history. In Exploration and Engineering, Erik M. Conway reveals how JPL engineers' creative technological feats led to major Mars exploration breakthroughs. He takes readers into the heart of the lab's problem-solving approach and management structure, where talented scientists grappled with technical challenges while also coping, not always successfully, with funding shortfalls, unrealistic schedules, and managerial turmoil. Conway, JPL's historian, offers an insider's perspective into the changing goals of Mars exploration, the ways in which sophisticated computer simulations drove the design process, and the remarkable evolution of landing technologies over a thirty-year period.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 387-392) and index.
Table of contents: title: Planetary observers, Mars observer; title: Politics and engineering on the Martian frontier; title: Attack of the great galactic ghoul; title: Engineering for uncertainty; title: Mars mania; title: The faster-better-cheaper future; title: Revenge of the great galactic ghoul; title: Recovery and reform; title: Margins on the final frontier; title: Sending a spy satellite to Mars; title: Robotic geologists on the red planet; title: Reengineering a spacecraft, and a program.